The Evolution of Design and Personal Branding with Paul Povolni

every company today in the 21st century is a media company most of them just don't know it yet as my classmates and my instructor would say hey have you considered a career in graphic design I'm like oh I won't be broke if we're in the business of making commercials we're going to be screwed I can see the writing on the wall this is when the label graphic designer doesn't fit anymore and initially when he was sick I was really nervous because I was an investor in apple I had stock I sold my stock before he passed away none of this is presenting pitching none of this is performative what's up everybody my name is Chris do and you're listening to the Head smack podcast hey welcome to the headsmack podcast my name is Paul baly and I have conversations with Misfits Mavericks Trailblazers and I'm excited to talk to Chris doe today uh Chris is a renowned Emmy award-winning designer CEO and founder of the future he helps creatives build businesses and businesses build Brands uh he's also considered a loud introvert and a recovering graphic designer and some even consider him the Jordan Peterson of creatives so glad to have you on Chris how you doing I'm good there's a lot of controversy with Jordan Peterson so I'm not sure I love all that label but it's an honor yeah well I know a lot of people appreciate uh your wisdom and your counsel and the way you're able to frame things and for those that love Jordan they love that about him yes and for those that are creative and in the creative spaces I they love that about you and the way you're able to frame things and narrow things down and make them simp simplified uh while also uh going deep as well so appreciate you doing this man this is going to be great I'm looking forward to it me too all right so uh you know both you and I are into superheroes um now I don't know I'm more of a fan than I am a geek or a note about it would you call yourself a fan or a geek or a nerd like are you like hyper into superheroes I think I'm a geek because I think a nerd has no social skills I think yeah I'm more of a fan and so usually when it comes to the podcast I like to start off by um asking people's origin stories uh you've considered and you've talked about having nine lives and so we can talk about that as briefly or as at length as you like but let's talk about your origin story what is the origin of Christo how far back do you want me to go for the origin story as far back as would make it relevant for our discussion about uh where you're at and the headsmack moments you've had along the way so significant things that have happened along the way in your journey okay well then I guess it's important

for your audience to know that I'm a first generation immigrant slre fugee my parents fled Vietnam in 1975 which is where I was born and so for me I felt most of my life as an outsider sometimes an outsider in my own family and outside in the real world because I'm the middle child of three boys I mean it's easy for the middle child to get lost in the mix of things you know I'm not the firstborn I don't herit the name rights and all that kind of stuff that goes along with that I'm not the baby the darling who gets away with murder I'm just the person who's usually forgotten about and so it has informed a little bit of how I am and how I move in the world because as I've learned in therapy the middle child tends to be the caretaker so we're really concerned about how other people feel and that's how we feel like we can stand out and it wasn't until I went to therapy that I learned that about myself and it helped me to get a lot of clarity as to why in some of my previous relationships I was so conflict diverse I was so worried about their feelings that I put their feelings ahead of mine wow so yeah I'm a first generation immigrant as well and uh you know my family fled from communism in Yugoslavia so I totally get that now I'm the firstborn so I'm sorry about that sorry for all the pain I may have inflicted it's your birth right so you know being a a first generation immigrant and uh you know being a creative what was that like was there any uh issues with being the creative kid and not you know having a regular type uh skill set yeah there's a lot of challenges being an Asian-American Coming to America no idea is you you've got to do well in school not just do okay like a is just kind of average that's the joke inside the Asian Community you have to get an A+ a four plus GPA and the thing about it is I think I'm smart I just never was really engaged with what they were teaching me I went to public school and so it's like this is boring I understand what you're talking about but I want to do something different and so oftentimes I would find myself doodling in my notebook kind of daydreaming a little bit I could still even with 50% of my brain paying attention to class get A's and B's but the other 50% was like dreaming about design about fashion about hairstyles and whatever else I was thinking about of drawing comic books and things like that so when did you first feel that validated the creative side of you I don't think it was until senior in high school that I fully accepted it because I was drawn to creative things art like airbrushing sculpting I took a metal class so I can make things with my hands I joined the yearbook staff and then I wound up designing the cover for the yearbook and I even won some jured awards for museums for the artwork that I did but as my classmates and my instructor would say hey have you considered a career in graphic design I'm like oh I w't be broke I didn't say it out loud but I thought it so I was like oh that's very nice for you to say thanks for wishing me to be broke the rest of my life so in SE as a senior I actually got a job inking or tracing over someone else's drawings and that was the beginning of something wonderful cuz back then I was making probably 350 375 an hour and my boss offered me a job and there's no negotiation he says I'll pay $18 an hour to Ink over my drawings and that is a ginormous pay increase I was thinking oh my god I've made it here I am I'm GNA earn like $40,000 a year and I'm on easy street I'm not even at a high school yet Paul so I was like this is great yeah and I know for me I don't know whether it was the same for you but for me I didn't even know what graphic design was I was a creative kid like I was an artist but I didn't understand and I love strategy I love thinking I was a thinker I love deep thinking I L reading I was I loved reading books I would read just my brother and I would just like grab every book and every imaginary book the wishing chair and the farway tree by y Blen like those were our books and you know asteris and oblix comic you know graphic novels and so I love creativity I love thinking I love reading but I didn't understand that there were other options for creatives that was not drawing pictures or sculpture or whatever when did you realize that there was this thing called graphic design pretty late but I'm G tell you how smart I am I had a friend who was a Vietnamese American uh woman and she's like Chris have you thought about like designing logos I'm like why would I do that that's so labor intensive and you can't

really draw a letter perfectly anyways and she goes no watch and so she went away and she worked on drawing a logo trying to impress me I think she had a crush on me or something and then she showed it to me and it was really beautiful tightly rendered letter forms a logo I didn't understand what it was back then I'm like yeah no that's not for me who would want to spend their life drawing logo types and what future could there be that's how smart I was and I think it was part of like ignorance and just this girl was so into me I was like whatever she brought to I'm not interested because if I showed interest it would be leading her on or something I don't know I'm just like no not it's terrible but where when it came to Crystal Clarity for me was one day my boss at the sil screening shop sent me on erand to go pick up some type setting type typ setting okay so you know I was making myself useful so I drove out to the man man's house and it wasn't far away and he brought me into a studio and he was still finishing up the type setting and I was like what is this Wizardry that you're doing here he had one of the original Mac SE I think the 512k monochrome all-in-one iMac if you will the very first iteration of it this ginormous thing next to his desk which I didn't understand what that was but that was like Apple's first laser printer it was enormous and it Whirled and the fan I could feel the heat coming on I'm like what is it doing and a little piece of paper comes out and he looks at he's like oh I need to make an adjustment he changes some things and as he was doing his thing I just saw his environment in his den home office he had what imagine today is what everybody is doing which is they have a an amazing homework office with a drafting table uh a tsquare protractor and all kinds of art instruments and I was thinking this is it this is what I need to be doing computer AED design I love computers takes away the TDM of hand doing things and all of a sudden like I need to know what this is and he hands me his business card his name is Dean Walker his graphic designer it's like that's wow that's what I want to do well then for me it was kind of interesting because I kind of came I think I'm older than you I'm not sure how old you are but uh I came into design and then they were doing everything manually I mean they had the rub down letters they had like everything was manual yeah the elro set the was it the Ruth Mach all yeah all of those things and for me I actually didn't like graphic design I thought I wanted to do graphic design but I saw how like particular and finicky and like technical it was that I was like maybe that's not what I want to do and luckily you know I went off to college studied that and I kind of liked it didn't do good at sculpture figure drawing and painting and then you know I I thought well maybe that's not what I want to do so I stepped away from it for a little bit but then the computer error came out and I remember being asked I was going to college and they asked me to work on the yearbook and I'm like cool what's a yearbook like this is when I came to America and you know so I worked on the yearbook and I did it like old school you know because there weren't computers at that point but by the next year they had Microsoft Word and you could do stuff with letters and then print it out on a laser printer and I was like oh my goodness I found it I love this and then Microsoft Publisher you know we can do a little more manipulation of words and stuff and that's when I knew like I love graphic design like I love bringing this together so what was your first job as a designer well before I answer that question I'm gonna make an educated guest deductive reasoning puts you at probably around 55 56 yeah I just turned 55 in April yeah see there you go I'm 52 so you're just a few years ahead of me yeah cuz all right cuz when I was in high school we're already using computers to do the layouts right and kind and kind of simple page layout not nothing fancy what we know today so okay what was my first legitimate job in doing design well the technical first job is just me doing the inking part and understanding hand lettering and tracing over his drawings I was a production artist maybe not a full and graphic designer but I go away to Community College because I couldn't get into an art school and I got a job at a place called zebra copies having just finished learning pagemaker Al this pagemaker and zebra copies had this job thing and I was like I love their facilities here it's like a good printing copying facility and in the back was there was their desktop publishing department so Lor de Martelli was my boss I have set woman and she's like hey you have the job great so I was paid now again somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 to 20 bucks an hour to do production design work and so what she had was a whole basket of things to do and a lot of the companies in La Hoya did travel services so their travel agency so what I wound up doing is drawing maps and helping people design their itinerary and just laying it out so she would just give me a bunch of stuff to do and I could do it pretty quickly so she's like this is great keep coming in kid and that was like my first real job as a graphic designer production artist that's amazing so you know your bio says that you're also a recovering graphic designer so I know you spent 27 years in the industry in you know leading the blind and now you're working with the future so when did you decide to become a recovering graphic designer well as a young person who is a immigrant not sure of who I am I was in search of an identity it seems like there was the jocks and the Stoners or the hip-hop folk and I was like I don't know who I am I'm just kind of this generic person when I found

graphic designer when I found I guess a skill that I was really good at I love that label I'm a graphic designer I said it with pride and everywhere I would go people like what do you I'm a graphic designer I'm a you know I would just say it really proudly and I eventually I got my way into art center I graduated and I started directing commercials and music videos shortly thereafter and I was still like I'm a graphic designer what makes me unique as a director is my understanding of typography form and contrast and then later on ADD movement and certain kinds of compositional things I was still graphic designer but eventually I started to think about it that when you tell people you're a graphic designer they think of you as a graphic designer one who designs graphics and so not bringing you into the conversation of copyrighting brand messaging and telling bigger campaigns and stories because they just thought you design graphics and that makes a lot of sense because you wouldn't expect a fashion designer to cook you a meal you wouldn't expect an interior designer to then do all your graphics so it kind of it fit until it's sto fitting because I was doing brand strategy work I was doing a lot of the thinking and the marketing stuff and then I was thinking this is a very limiting title at this point so it's time for me to be a recovering graphic designer well and I think part of that is just because of so many people have access to the toolbox that so many people enter the space and then I think the title you know with so many people at all kinds of levels of Entry that yeah the graphic designer term is I don't want to say cheapen but it just it feel it doesn't feel as special as it once did because it took a certain level of skills and access you know to the tools it took certain skills and access to the technology and now everybody has access to it so it doesn't feel like it's such an exclusive club right and so that probably was part of that taking that phrase or that title down a couple notches yeah you know I talked to Brian Collins recently he was telling me about the history of the different titles in which we've used to describe our profession he said and I can't remember like the first version of it was actually graphic designer and then it became commercial artist and then he became communication designer and then it became brand ident or identity designer and then brand identity designer brand designer and we're kind of stuck in this place now and he thinks it's something much different now yeah I would think so yeah and that's when I was learning about it is yeah it was a Communications and it was uh you know and I was like oh man that's I don't know what I didn't even know that existed like I didn't know that thing existed and so you know You' mentioned a little bit of you know starting the Blind and doing you know more work out side of uh graphic design you know of doing the lettering and stuff to more video work what was that like what was that transition like was that a natural transition was that something you found you actually had a skill in or was that out of necessity how did that transition happen the last semester had at Art Center I took an a 2d animation class taught by Linda Wyman of linda. com Fame and I was introduced to After Effects like this is pretty cool I like moving things around and at this point in time I think regular 2D print design was boring to me I felt like I could do it wasn't that difficult better than most of my classmates I'm like H I need a new challenge and so I fall into this thing and luck would have it that my work was featured on the Adobe After Effects CD ROM as part of like the thing that they shipped out to everybody back when we had CD ROMs to hold on to and I started my studio blind and I was doing a lot of different work so somebody would call me for logo work I'd do logal work you need an indentity design for your company I would do that and you want me to design graphics for commercials I would do that and we were doing okay we would do a bunch of different projects slowly getting to like1 $200,000 in buildings just the first couple of years but then I realized something I wasn't very good at anything and I learned the first important lesson that you need to is like Thou shalt Focus thou shal find a niche and own it and grow thought leadership in that space and I remember saying to my wife because I was a little embarrassed we were awarded a project for an animated feature film I'm sorry we had to design the main title for a feature film it wasn't animated and the company that hired me on our studio they were nervous that we didn't know what we're doing and they had a right to be nervous by the way I wasn't offended so they said hey and they did it this the most graceful way they said hey we're going to send one of our senior animators over just to help you because I was stressed we're building these big titles for a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it and he came by and he looked at the files he said hey do you ever add animation curves I'm like what is that wow you know ease in ease out you know and then he showed me even for the basic movement and that it would feel a lot more elegant by just adding ramp up and ramp out and so when I saw that I knew then I want to get good at this and clearly that guy knows more about this than I do and so I had to say look we're not going to do web design anymore logo design we're only going to focus on motion design and that was within the first year and a half of starting the business wow and so you know you want M is for work within that kind of space right and so when did you transition into the next phase of even the Blind and what prompted that decision and so you know the folks that are going to listen to this their business owners their designers their creatives their entrepreneurs and so understanding you know a business and the reasons for its transition and how it evolves and you know sometimes what you start with is not what you end with and sometimes those transitions happen what transition you back to doing more identity type work I want to share a couple of the key ideas I think that might hit home for some of the creativ who are listening to this in that number one I'm a very pragmatic person I'm quite detached from anything as a refugee immigrant you kind of become used to moving around and it's just my city I don't even know nothing is mine I'm just exactly where I'm at and tomorrow it'll be something different and there's a famous Wayne Gretzky quote about him skating to where the puck is going not to where it's at so if you're coupled with one you are detached from things and you understand Trends and you could see the market move I want to go to where the market is moving so even in college I went to Art Center all my classmates were thinking about print design they were thinking about packaging in fact the major that you that we were in was called print or graphic design and packaging that was the major and that's what they're preparing us for and I don't know if you

recall but right around that time CDs were starting to start to get a little soft in terms of sales it was just already beginning uh maybe not totally apparent yet it would take another five or eight years before the whole industry would collapse and I was introduced to 3D modeling 3D animation 2D animation and compositing I was like this is wow this is exciting we're at the verge of some new era and back when I got into it wasn't it didn't even have a title yet it did it wasn't known until later as motion design because there were debates should we call ourselves motion graphic designers motion designers or motion artists it's like I don't know you guys call what whatever you want I don't really care I'm just going to transition digital specifically motion and that AR took me over 10 years to kind of figure out like I think I'm towards the end of like what I need to learn so at first you animate little pieces of type you might animate a logo and then you might do a 2d character in a liveaction plate and then you do fully animated two-dimensional videos hybrid CGI and liveaction and then by the end of our Cy we would direct Fully live action things had no design or typography or animation in it at all just go through that Arc and that excited me because new challenges I taught myself photography I taught myself about lensing and the language of Cinema and editing and color grading and visual effects and there was a lot to learn there and then I got bored again and I was thinking this is weird because what we wind up doing is we work with advertising agencies who figure out the messaging the positioning and the campaign and we brought it to life we infused it with creativity but we weren't making any of those decisions and I wanted to figure that out and that's when we started to move into brand strategy and to be able to work with clients directly we had to learn the skills that the ad agencies had yeah and so you know that evolved into you know talking more about brand strategy but there was a time in design where separating the two wasn't a thing like what you know we didn't talk about brand strategy it's kind of being its own thing it was almost like we did the exploration we did the discovery we talked about people but we didn't separate brand strategy from design and then it suddenly became a thing uh where we talked about a lot more and even though it's something that's been around forever you know a lot of times that happens is we we give new names to old things or new things are they seem like new things but they're just old things just resurfaced or separated out and so when you started with um the blind doing more brand strategy what are some of the key pivots you had to make in talking to even to your clients about it well I I'll say this I may I may agree or disagree with you on some of these things I think a lot of designers work with clients directly and it feels like there's a discovery phase brand strategy but what they're doing is they're just trying to figure out what the client's preferences are and what their overall goals are but it was never really connected to business strategy and business planning because most design don't know anything about that to begin with they don't understand copyrighting they don't understand how to shape the tone and voice of a real brand and so yes we do have these conversations and they've been happening a long time but it wasn't really because there was a system of understanding business needs so somebody might launch a business and say we're adding a new line of like coffee to our offerings and it's going to grow our business and we try to understand what they're thinking the positioning but we don't know how to Really shape that at all in the new way in which we're talking about brand strategy is we actually challenge the clients and they don't even know how to position it and we help them to do the research and do a competitive analysis and we start to figure out the tone and voice which allows them to be different and unique from their competitors and this isn't just an exercise for us to do the kind of design we want it's actually driven by their business and marketing goals so you're designing the entire customer journey and this is when the label graphic designer doesn't fit anymore right this is when the first time I'm feeling that friction because you know what you actually didn't have a brand platform even you didn't know if you wanted to create a bunch of different products or how you're going to Anchor all these things together so when we started working with clients directly because for the first I want to say almost 20 years it was through an agency clients hire an agency they became agency of record they they're like we're talking about shy day we're talking about Fone and building we're talking about multi-million billion dollar agencies who then subcontract 100,000 500,000 million jobs to their vendors like us so we didn't understand about anything about what is the one three five year strategy where are we going to be what are the other product offerings we just got to see a tiny little part of the problem but when you're working with client direct and this really came into focus when we're working with Anime Expo when we were working with OES and Trojan storage and then ultimately Hudson Pacific Properties which is a$1 13 billion company they have the money they have the needs and we could be their partner in this become agency of record

if we played our cards right so this is like recurring work this is about understanding that this is just one piece of a multi-part puzzle that you can't just solve this and say like aesthetically we solved all the problems how do we solve the business problem and when you're marketing commercial real estate there's one metric they care about how quickly did we sell out the lease on this property before it was built so when did the understanding of strategy like when did it really hit you strong that we needed to Pivot into that space a little more CU I guess that you know because I totally agree with you and you know and I imagine that graphic designer is the person that I described you know and what you're talking about is the evolution of what that is it's beyond just utaker and what do you like what do you not like what colors do you like let me create that for you so when did that really like hit you hard as another major pivot you said you kind of watch for these Trends and things when did that really hit you the hardest it came uh to me in late 2013 2014 and I know that because I know the chronology of a lot of things that were happening so I was thinking maybe the day of commercials is going away because as we're streaming content we have DVRs that allow us to skip commercials if we're in the business of making commercials we're going to be screwed I can see the writing on the wall now maybe I was three to six years out from when that was going to happen but I knew it it was just inevitable to me clear that day and so my brother Works in Silicon Valley I said Hey in the beginning of our career 20 years ago we were designing websites I think I need to return to this because I can also see the rise of the web design firms that were now 100 to 300 people big he goes okay I have a client for you just do this work for them and I did it didn't charge them a lot of money because I was going to pay for the experience I think they had a budget of like say 5,000 bucks and we designed the website very much like how you would design a digital brochure we did understand user experience design user flows information architecture any of that stuff and we weren't happy and they weren't happy they nobody was happy and I think they were right that they shouldn't be happy because we designed it we built it and then they almost changed it immediately so I I reach out to a friend of mine his name is Jose caber and he has been working in the web design space for as long as I've been working in the motion design space so I called him up and I said hey man I need your help I want to do more web design work I don't know what I'm doing he goes let me show you find a client and I'll show you how to do it no charge at all I'm like great I just happen to have a client Trojan storage he goes okay let me show you how we do it in the digital agency side he ran a facilitated session that was about six hours long with my client I just sat there and watched and it was brilliant he was designing user profiles he was designing the customer Journey he was figuring out the features and functions and defining the brand voice and the culture and I was thinking this is like so eye opening for me and now I knew how to do design or how to build websites but I also learned something about def finding the brand because when you build a website for someone you have to know their brand and their goals and their marketing initiatives and so I immediately said this is a framework and a process that would allow me to do brand strategy which is what I was really passionate about I just didn't know how to do it and that was the big unlock right there that's amazing and I think for a lot of businesses that they still you know in that place so they don't fully get the value of that strategy what are some of the mistakes that businesses make when it comes to you know even working with a designer because you know right now you're mentoring designers you also help businesses you know Business Leaders build Brands so what are some of the early mistakes that they think when they're wanting to step into this and when they're communicating with somebody that is going to provide the look for them what are some of the things that they miss out on I think what happens is at the point in which a business owner founder realizes they need the help of a designer they've already figured out their own problem it's like the lawyer or the person who defends himself in court has a fool for a client and so we don't go into doctor saying exactly this is what I need done we tell them the symptoms and we allow the doctor to guide us through the process of what might be wrong we run a bunch of tests Diagnostics we test a hypothesis and the more experienced doctor then recommends certain procedures minimally invasive until they get to the point in which like we have to do open heart by triple bypass surgery or something and so when they looking at a designer they're thinking of a person to execute like hands for a job and that's the first mistake right a graphic designer right another gra yeah graphic designer and say to them I need 13 Pages designed I need it to work like this and that as if you knew what you were doing and you know there there's a lot of designers out there who claim to be able to do things that they can't and they then create a bad taste for lots of people and so then now there's General distrust on both sides so that's not a great way to begin a relationship so what I would say is think about your goals what business objectives what marketing awareness whatever lift you want to create from where you are to where you want to be clear about that be open to the ways in which you can accomplish that find a few people that you like hopefully through referrals that usually works the best and then in the interviewing process ask them show me some examples of how you solved this problem before doesn't have to be for this vertical but tell me how you've done it who you've done it for and what the process was like so they get the opportunity to articulate that designers are not great at talking about their work and their process so lead them have a little Grace on both sides and see if you like the vibe to see if they're asking the right questions and if they're able to clearly articulate what they do how much how long what expectations are where does this go wrong those kinds of questions that need to be answered and hopefully they lead that conversation but you can lead it as well and so you know with uh what you have talked about and you know being in helping Business Leaders build Brands what are some of the things that uh when you're talking to those Business Leaders that you start talking to them about is it the same kind of thing as you just shared or is there something else when it comes to helping a business leader directly build a brand that's a very uh sharp question

there Paul I didn't write helping businesses build Brands because that's something else when I say Business Leaders build Brands I'm talking about personal brand so Elon Musk has a personal brand that's more powerful than Tesla Steve jobs has a stronger personal brand than Apple and basically every influential CEO founder of a company that you can look up you'll see that they're following their engagement as much stronger than the business brand right and we're in this age now where we're a little distrustful of any information that we get except for the information we get from people that we trust so when it's coming from a corporate mouthpiece an ad campaign we could get the feels but then we're like suspicious yeah and the first thing we do is like I heard this movie is good well let me double check on Rotten Tomatoes Amazon reviews like glass door or whatever else like let me just double check what you say is true because there's a lot of husters out there talking their way through life and just making bold claims you know and this is why I think it's the age in which we live in with the social platforms and our ability to communicate directly to our audience that the personal brand has become probably one of the most searched things now that people are trying to sort out so when I say I help Business Leaders build Brands I'm talking about their personal brand not their company brand okay yeah now is there a danger in doing that because you know I know there are some brands that if it wasn't for that person that business leader that had built a brand around themselves that if they leave the company that the company has problems like it falters it like people are concerned if that figurehead that personal brand you know if Elon leaves you know Tesla and all that he's doing you know when Steve Jobs passed away you know will Apple continue what's the danger of a leader building a personal brand and what's the value okay this is very important very good question so when the business founder or leader is able to Define their personal brand often times the company in which they run now they have a Northstar now you know of Brands today that their Founders have since long passed away and when they do branding and rebranding it's because they're they've drifted too far away from the original mission and vision of the founder so they go back and excavate and they find like go Colonel Sanders stood for this and Colonel Sanders looked like this and he talked like this and this is what he was about or berts bees or whatever company if it's if the Founder's long gone what they try to do is ReDiscover the origin story basically your very first question to me right they're trying to realign the values and the culture back to the original person now the original person had no brand stood for nothing had nothing of Interest then they're kind of lost sadly sometimes then it's a composite of a lot of different ideas that they have that they now have a shared brand but it's not really embodied by any one person or anything that you can put your finger on say this is where it started and this is how it began so Steve Jobs brand still lives on pretty strong today even though it's been over 10 years since he's passed away and initially when he was sick I was really nervous because I was an investor in apple I had stock so I was like trembling like any day Steve Jobs dies and we're done because everything is around Steve it's the cult of Steve and I sold my stock before he passed away wow mistake Paul clearly mistake don't ever take uh investment advice Financial advice for me on that front because I was a coward right I knew he was sick and when Apple stock went up and went down when it went up I sold my financial advisor says Chris we should not do this I'm like sell it dumbest decision I've made in the market okay so Steve passes Apple's trembling everybody's like worried Tim Cook has taken Steve's idea and taking it to stratospheres far above what Steve where Steve left it and so what happens is a really strong company builds up systems in place that the composite of the people who survive it never are equal to the person the founder but the composite of them is much stronger than the founder so when Steve says you know what we're going to make Tim the CEO the acting CEO while I'm away and Johnny Ivy is going to be heading the design department and Phil is going to take care of products or whatever so they have their team in place and you know even dogs can take down a lion yeah you know you get the right dogs together and they can work in tandem they can take down a lion individually cannot that the lion will destroy them and so we are now 10 years Plus past Steve's passing and Apple's worth $3 trillion dollar I think the first company break a trillion that was not oil based and then now three trillion that clearly it didn't impact them if anything it gives people a clear road map as to what kind of company to build what kind of culture to have what kind of company to cultivate and I'll say this though Elon Musk has such a strong personal brand that in many instances his brand is so powerful and valuable that when he says I want to have a conversation the world listens so that Tesla doesn't spend money on Advertising not until recently they spent zero doar in advertising so if you look at risk and reward and you say well he saved his company a couple billion dollars in advertising well that's a pretty good reward what's the risk that he might die one day and that we don't have an executive team in place yeah that's a risk but the opposite is much worse which is companies like American Express do you know who found at American Express I have no idea me neither and that's why they spend half a billion dollars in advertising a year yeah so

you know we're talking about billion dollar companies trillion dollar companies what about for the companies that aren't quite there you know that they this still big companies you know and I'm not talking you know small Mom and Pops and maybe even them I mean I think they could million from it yeah like so for them what does building a personal brand look like what does that mean like if somebody said you know I own a whatever a cookie company or where does starting a personal brand start for somebody like that okay and should they should and I I'll make the argument right now so let's say you're a cookie company and you do $30 million in sales in the United States is that okay anual recovering recurring Revenue that's not a bad company let's say that you have two identical companies oh no let's start with hypothetical one you have one company and there's no real brand there's just the Cookie Company yeah okay but it was founded by a guy named Paul and Paul is a multigeneration baker cookie uh maker all that kind of stuff and then Paul all of a sudden decides one day he's gonna start sharing recipes and talking and producing content around his love for cookies and what makes the difference between that kind of cookie and this and how many grams of chocolate so he's becomes like the Willy Wonka personality of cookies and then one day Paul and his Partners disagree they just disagree they're like you know what it's been a good ride we need to separate our ways what happens to the Cookie Company when Paul leaves because he's built such a strong personal brand does that company survive just think about that for a little bit okay and so then Paul goes off and he wants to start a new Cookie Company does Paul have an easier Time Finance getting financing Angel Investors getting positive terms and conditions in terms of like warehouses distribution and I think the answer is yes and yes and then Paul's like hey everybody I've started a new company I'm going to be opening up in January of next year I'm looking for talented people in marketing in the kitchen and service people and all the old people like where're with Bob he's a bozo and then they silently quietly start sending you their resumes in fact actually when you leave several of them they do the opposite of Jerry McGuire moment and you're like who's with me and they're like us because you have the vision we believe in what you believe in you have the values this other person just wants to sell cookies so should you have a brand put yourself in that situation I can make this much more concrete for folks I can give you other examples but every company today in the 21st century is a media company most of them just know it yet media companies need a voice a personality they need a leader and that's you and I'm loving this new expression I've been hearing I'm going to repeat it which is different is better than better most companies focus on being better not enough different the difference is what creates the brand that's what creates the preference and what allows you to charge a premium to have dedicated dying loyal fans being different so being different um you know for a $30 million cookie company is one thing what about for the chiropractor what about for the roofer the plumber like bringing it down to even the next level from the $30 million Cookie Company what does that look like for them is that something worth pursuing for even them or are they like Ah that's for those bigger companies you know I don't need to worry about a personal brand this is still marketing and branding 101 so let's take a look at this a product or service without story is commodity Commodities trade on lowest price wins in commodity if I had two bags of corn and there was no differentiation between the two would you buy the one that's more expensive or the one that's cheaper most people would like there's really literally no difference I'm going to buy the cheaper one almost always and then the the bag of corn says well we're certified organic and we're third generation uh migrant workers it's a family-owned business differentiation literally the Cor of corn exactly the same certified organic third generation migrant immigrant workers whatever well now Paul you may or may not pay more for the other bag of corn that looks exactly the same and why would you do

that and there's a reason it's a deep psychological need to have some control over the world in which you live in so when you spend money you subconsciously and consciously know that you're allowing one company to play a little bit longer and you're hoping the other company goes away like when you drive down the street and you have to fill up in your petrol car you see shell you see Exxon you see mobile you I don't know what the other companies are BP do you always go to the same one if you can or do you just randomly pull up to anyone that is available I go to the same one which one is that I'm just curious I go to Costco with Sams good gas okay that's fine that makes sense to me yeah right but like we have preference and you go there because it's a good value and you might be able to do some of your monthly grocery shopping there because if you're going to Costco right and you might grab yourself a like a dollar hot dog and a dollar ginormous Coke or something like that right not saying anything about you know your diet or anything but if you do that that's because you like the product that they offer and you like how it makes you feel about yourself so Anna lapi said this and I learned this from Kevin Finn she said that every dollar that you spend is a vote for the world that you want to live in so I go out of my way to spend my money on things I want to see more of I'll give you the example right now and people I think will start to understand this Mad Max ferosa did you see it yet Paul not yet that's on my agenda for this weekend okay now I'm gonna ask you this question why do you want to see that film because I'm Australian and it's Mad Max honestly those are good reasons okay all right here's the thing George Miller's a genius in my opinion oh yeah he created the whole Mad Max franchise he also created a Happy Feet like how did one mind create these two things did you know this right yeah I do you know what I read that fact I'm like no that no but it is literally the same guy my goodness yeah you know mumbles and Mad Max they're the same Creator it's like unbelievable okay so George for everything he is and he's had a career that's lasted I don't know 40 years which is incredible that he's an active working director as relevant as today as he ever was he's worked in Crazy post-apocalyptic worlds and just a world where there's a little Global warping and trapping of animals it's kind of amazing but it is bombing at the box office did you know that I heard that I was disappointing but yes it is disappointing and I go and look at Rotten Tomatoes it is a 90% score which very high for Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic right and so I asked my family fam we're all going in different directions people are going off somewhere for summer and I'm G to be traveling soon do you guys want to watch this film together and they're like what is fosa I'm like oh and I explained it to them and they're like Dad why would you want to watch us we have no interest and here's what I said one George Miller's a genius I want to make sure he keeps getting the rights to make the films that he wants to make number two it's the first time a male-dominated cast is being led by Anna Taylor Joy a woman if we want to say we want more diversity as leading roles for women because a bunch of these superhero films being led by women are bombing at the box office the Marvels Madame web and now furios is going down what does that say for all the like thumping of chest and pumping of fists to say like we want to change the system if we don't spend money to support the things even if it's not a good film we just need to go because it's important now look I don't want tell you all this thing and people are like oh Chris is going this liberal like flag waving thing I'm not virtue signaling this is true I'm going to go see this film now if it got a 12% review I'm like George we can't always bat a 100 or a thousand we sometimes miss one and that's okay but here I am like I have to see it it's George Miller I want to support him I know it's going to be great he hasn't made a bad film and you know what I want to make sure that the studi say it's okay to have a female lead we just need good films for them to work on that's all right Madame web is a stinker don't waste your time watching that it was a piece of garbage film guys I don't care how many actresses the a-listers they put in that it's a piece of Garb the script was messed up to begin with but that's what happens when Sony runs a film no I actually like the Marvels I thought the Marvels surprised me I was going into that thinking I'd hate it because I think Captain Marvel was just it just was not done right and but when I went when I saw the Marvel I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it but that bombed as well it bombed as well and there's all kinds of things like Brie Larson no one wants to work with her and this and that and I didn't love the Marvels I didn't like element the Elementals or what is that whatever that was a bad film too it's like and they they gave it to a woman to etal the eternals that's what it's called The Eternal some of these films are oh my God guys I love comic books but I have a standard and you must meet that standard and it did not make

the standard do you think by time of superhero movies uh no crappy ones yeah I am so you know and so we kind of you know moved into talking about movies when we're talking about um you know also building a personal brand for you know the chiropractor or whatever because I think there is power in you um producing content being out there being the face to represented and I think there is also the chance that your brand will be super tied in personal into your business there's also the possibility that is not necessarily a negative thing because you're differentiating and I love what you said about differentiation you know it's not and somebody else once said it's not the best that's um always wins it's the best known that always wins and to be the best known sometimes it's simply by differentiation you know is by doing something different even in what you're communicating even what you're doing visually but just being different as opposed to being same and every Everybody kind of wanting to compete who's doing this let me do the same thing you know what's Quark doing in design does better you know and illustrator and not saying we're totally different and something set apart from that what are some other challenges that you see um you know because you work with designers and helping designers help businesses what are some other things that designers sometimes uh the challenge they face in working with businesses that you try and help them to negotiate that relationship and make sure that they're able to serve the businesses the best they can I also need to answer your other question because I went off on this tangent I may have derailed the entire podcast Paul no no that was amazing I I'll talk superheroes all day man well you're a roofer and there's a thousand roofers in your neighborhood and if you can't be first to Market you better be different ideally you'd be first and different and oftentimes first is different so you have to be more different than first that's the key so if you're a roofer and I get three bids and I don't know you from anybody well good luck with that but you know what I'm seeing now like really boring jobs done by one person and they stand out there's a guy who does pressure washing of driveways and there's another guy and he cleans rugs these filthy freaking rugs or another person who cleans cars that are just did somebody like forget about a car for three years and pull out of the barn cuz the cars this person works on are just horrific in their condition dirt and stains and moldy food in it it's just horrific and they go through and they meticulously clean things they don't even say anything or a guy who like mows the lawn and trims the hedges and things like that there overgrown things I don't know if you've seen any these videos but he'll knock on the door and he's like hey I'm just in the neighborhood I just saw that you're you have an overgrown lawn I'm not here to sell anything I I was just wondering if you would mind if I would just do this free of charge because I make content I just would like to do this for you oh dude you can't believe how many of those I've watched okay so we're in the same boat right yeah so now think in a in an average Suburban neighborhood how many people might do gardening and Landscaping but the only one we'll talk about is the one who does that video Yeah boring average me to hoam businesses can stand out because they understand how to create differentiation they know how to tell a story and so now like when we're thinking about it's like I don't want any person I want that guy I want that gal I don't want just anybody and so if you do $100,000 a year and you want to differentiate pay P attention okay I think I landed that plane now is that all right yeah that's awesome okay now we'll go through the whole what can we do for designers and how can they overcome the certain challenges in working with clients the first question I have for you is designers have lots of challenges they have mostly self-inflicted wounds regarding money or regarding process their discomfort talking about business poorly positioned and just not knowing how to generate leads now of all the challenges they might have where should we focus the conversation Paul so probably there's two parts even to that um the first part is you know we went through an era of where bad design was working you know with the whole clickfunnel type era where it didn't matter design seemed irrelevant you know secondary and so and then there's also the availability of graphic design is so prevalent that answering the question for even a business owner is how does design make me money how does like why do I need to care about design when others are making money without worrying about it at all there's a quote here that I read in Marty num's book I think it was the brand Gap about what design is and I'm forgetting the person's name but he's a Nobel Laureate and he defines Design This Way one who devises a course of action to go from an existing condition to improved condition well I love that that's like change management okay so a designer isn't someone who makes something red yellow that turns a square into a circle a designer is one who understands your business needs your marketing needs your customer experience needs and says hey which one of these

things is going to move the needle for you and engages you in a business dialogue and then goes away to devise what the best approach is and sometimes you need a sales funnel expert and I'm not that person I believe that's what you need and I'm not I can't do it I wish I could but I can't and sometimes it's like you know it turns out that the way the menu is designed is causing a delay that it's taking on average two minutes longer to put in an order and so now you have a queue of frustrated customers and some of them just walk away so we can get people in and out and help you design a better menu now I'm not talking about the type face or the point size or the color and the contrast or the texture of the menu I'm talking about design the menu like what items should be here how should we structure this so that it makes the most sense and how do we maximize the value for you as the business owner while creating delight and ease of use for the consumer that's design Paul so if you're asking this question like well how to make money on this you're just looking at the problem the wrong way and I guess it comes down to asking them too what problem they're trying to solve as opposed to saying do you want bigger logo bigger you know different color different whatever it's actually narrowing it down to what is the key thing that you're trying to solve as opposed to let me just start creating stuff for you and hopefully it's pretty enough uh for you to approve it and pay for it yeah the way I like to approach it and if there's a couple of steps in a framework so that people can get their head wrapped around this and I don't want to say this like we have clients to blame because they don't know how to have a conversation with us the large blame the large portion of blame belongs to creative people who call themselves designers who are underqualified who haven't trained who are thinking very selfishly self- serving narcissistically about what it is they want to do and the client interfering with their creation of art a lot of that we own okay everybody who's listening to this so we have to changeed and you have an opportunity to elevate yourself to be different than the vast majority of the practitioners who call themselves designers I think the first question that we need to know is what is the goal what is that you want to accomplish before we understand the problem the goal is more important than the problem because absent what the goal is all problems seem legitimate okay so what is the goal and then when they tell us the goal we need to ask them something to the effect of what is the reason why this goal is important to you so then even the goal is not legitimate until we know the root cause of that right okay now and what we have to do is this dance between the goal and the reason for achieving this goal and if it's the right goal for the right reason then we can move to step two and we've already lost most designers at this point because they didn't even ask the question or they just accept the goal is a real goal okay once we determine what the goal is we have to say well what's the challenge what's the roadblock that's the problem yeah it's a very kind of logical flow here there's a reason why I want to achieve this and this is the goal I want to achieve problem now I understand the obstacle that's standing in your way and when I understand that we can look at possible solutions okay but before we get there we can say okay if this is your goal and there's an obstacle what does the dream outcome look like to you like in Your Wildest Dreams If This Were to work what would that look like so we're asking them to look into the future to describe to us yeah a desired future state which puts them at a much more positive state of mind so we're helping them to frame this through not looking at the expense and the pain but where they like to be when we're through the funnel or the tunnel what does it look like are you sitting at the beach drinking a My Thai enjoying beautiful Caribbean music what are you doing then we ask them the flip side of that question is what are your worst fears what's going to happen so it's kind of a heaven hell kind of situation like in heaven this looks like this and hell it looks like this well I've wasted a lot of time go okay I miss deadlines my partners are Furious and they've canceled their contracts and I'm now working 80 hours a week making half as much money okay all right so they're giving all the clues that you need the parameters in which you can operate under such that hopefully you can draw the insight and say well based on everything you've told me it sounds like this is what needs to happen is that correct and they're like yes and so what you're doing there is you're helping them to get clarity on their problem the motivation and the potential solution and their worst fears none of this is presenting pitching none of this is performative yeah I'm 100% present to the conversation and now they have this clarity at this point I think they just start throwing money at you and so for the business owner

that that's listened to this and realized man I my designer did not even ask me any of that stuff um how do they have a conversation then with somebody that they're wanting to bring in to help them out with this that stuff what from their side of the conversation what does that look like for them yeah I think hopefully it's first time I'm using a metaphor like this let's see if it fits it's kind of like you asking yourself why are my knees bruised and bloody when I just keep swimming on the shallow end of the kitty pool okay people who swim on the deep end of the pool don't have the same problem of scrape knees and it's because you're you've told yourself I have $500 to do something I'm going look on Fiverr I'm going look upw work you've decided to stay in the kidy pool to solve a big problem so a Jim Ron quote is something like this don't minor in the majors don't make a minor effort for a major result and don't spend a major effort for minor result we're recalibrating here we want to make a major effort for major result because doing little things that don't matter right why would we do that so we have to say Okay given what I know about the outcome that I'm hoping for some percentage of that goal is appropriate amount of money so if you are trying to attract new customers and you have a potential net gain of $400,000 at minimum you're going to spend 40K for this not 4K right and that's the problem so what they're doing is they're saying you know what I got a really small hook I have a really small piece of bait why aren't I catching big fish so with the little designers swim in who don't know what they're doing because they're students they're tier designers and they just found a random portfolio they're not vetted they don't have a process uh they barely even are incorporated as a company they swim in they keep biting the baiter like I can't make a meal out of this you began the whole process the wrong way I love that and I think for some that's a headsmack moment because they've you know wanted minimal investment in something that others that are succeeding have given big investment to and then they're wondering why am I not succeeding well if you look at you know those that are succeeding they've invested in things that you're shy of investing in and so I think that's pretty F powerful as we wrap this up and maybe this is too big of a question to even end with but you know as you see creativity you know you're in the creativity space you're you mentor and you help creatives on such a level what is the evolution that you've seen in creativity and influence and just the business of design what how is it changing I think creativity by its own very nature changes forms and if that's what you are if you're real creative you just change forms you morph you take the shape I think of water which is what Bruce Lee says be water my friend it takes the shape of the cup it could be powerful it could be gentle it can be nurturing it could be destructive you just be water so creativity in the 80s and 90s meant production art ruling pens Ruby lith and things like that and that was creativity because we work within the constraints that we have desktop publishing comes along in the late 90s early 2000s and creativity meant digital type faces page layout programs photo manipulation and editing and then we get into the early to mid 2000s and we get into web design web design 1. 0 so now we're talking about interaction design and understanding user flows and so when we get stuck in the form of it we're basically saying I'm going to design myself into obsolescence but if we say we are creative people and we go where creative things go which is it takes whatever form it wants to take so in the future it's about running marketing campaigns that are quantifiable and measurable for business results not just for vanity metrics we manage social accounts because everybody is actively building their footprint telling their story to be radically different not just different we're helping people leverage video content to reach a broader audience it's called a broadcast because you're casting to a broad audience so we've learned the tools of how to create impactful effective videos that gets watched not because it's beautiful not because you shot with an 8K sensor because nobody cares outside of a very small group of people no one cares and if we move into culture design information maybe ethics design or something that's bigger than just what something looks like then we have a shot at making a real impact on the world that's just Evolution and right now it's using AI power tools to leverage our thinking our way of seeing the world imagining things have yet to be produced and being playful with words so that we can come up with crazy combination of things it's a very exciting time to live in Paul it is I totally agree with that and I mess with AI it seems like daily uh just trying to figure it out and learn it and it is such an exciting time uh for creatives it's kind of like the next big evolution of what we're doing I think you know the inter like all you've mentioned the internet the graphics computers all of that stuff I think the phone the iPhone changed that was kind of a one of the big moves in society and culture that uh has impacted us and I think this is kind of

the next one that is unavoidable unignorable uh it's just a part of the future and what we're going to be uh very it's going to be a part of our lives and we can't avoid it and so this has been amazing Chris uh I can't believe how quickly time has flown and I know we could have gone deeper and further and wider on a lot of things uh but this has been amazing and uh for those that want to uh follow along with what you're doing uh what's the best way to connect with you and follow along with what you're doing I think the best thing you can do is find me anywhere on social media I'm at the Chris do and last name is spelled do o you can go to the Future and if you're interested in programs that we have we run a coaching Community called the future Pro there's a customer success roadmap quiz that you can take which will give you one of five or six possible options that my education director Stephanie Owens has put together that includes resources tips and guides and things like that with links that if you were to do it will hopefully prepare you for the next level and so be on the lookout for that if you all you have to do is go to the future. com and you can find the quiz and take it that's awesome and definitely uh check out Chris on YouTube has a lot of great content that's how I first got introduced to Chris uh first time I saw him was creating content online and then absolutely loved what he had to say and so definitely look him up on there a future Pro Group I encourage you to join if you're a designer or creative I'm a part of that as well being a hard for a couple of years and absolutely super high value uh the calls that we get to have and the coaching and the hot seats and all of that is incredibly value even for somebody like me that's been in it for 30 years I still learn things I still get refined I get things chipped away bad thinking you know off thinking and so I do encourage you to also check out the future Pro Group Chris thank you so much man this has been awesome thanks Paul thanks for that head smack moment